More than 7,800 students in all the academic levels tested were presented with information in social media, news articles, and comments. The study discovered the following:82 percent of middle school students couldn’t tell the difference between sponsored articles and real news stories.Most of the high school students didn’t bother to verify where photos online came from and blindly accepted the photos’ stated contexts.Many high school students couldn’t tell the difference between a real news article and a real-looking fake news article on social media. In fact, in one particular example, more than 30 percent of high school students tested thought a post claiming to be from Fox News was more reliable than one actually from Fox News.Out of the Stanford college students that were tested, more than 80 percent couldn’t identify biased content from independent news sources supported by groups like lobbying firms as being less reliable than a mainstream news source.John, who teaches a class called Media Effects, tries to instill in his students a sense of critical thinking when they look at any sort of media.“When it comes to my class, I want them to know right off the bat that it’s okay to question any type of communication,” John said.John gave an example of a hypothetical situation he uses in his class to illustrate media bias. In the example, two news stations both cover a snowstorm, but one focuses on the hazardous road conditions, and the other focuses on kids playing in the snow.“With a news story, they tell you what they feel are the important details, but what’s important will depend on perhaps the opinions of the news director that day or the prominence of the people involved,” John said. “All of these things that come together to determine newsworthiness. There’s room for opinion and there’s room for bias because whenever we’re dealing with human beings, we’re dealing with bias.”John also uses this example to make a point that it’s important to be media literate.“A media literate person would recognize that (each story) is one area at one point in time, but that there’s more going on,” John said. “And so media literacy requires some level of activity on the part of the viewer.”Sara Van Tuyl, a history teaching major, interns at Timpview High School teaching U.S. History to juniors. As part of her teaching, Van Tuyl makes a point to educate her students on how to evaluate historical sources and news sources.“When we do those activities we make sure that when they look at modern sources, they are forced to corroborate them,” Van Tuyl said.After the Stanford study was published, the Stanford History Education Group published a website with tools teachers can use to teach young students about media literacy and civic reasoning. Van Tuyl uses some of these tools when teaching her high school students.“I think a lot of the Stanford University tools that they give us are very useful because some of the things they offer are specifically designed for historical thinking, and historical thinking skills are necessary to critical thinking of modern news and events as well,” Van Tuyl said.Through teaching how to evaluate historical and modern news sources, Van Tuyl hopes she can help the students learn how to make informed decisions.“My goal is that by the time I leave this class my students are able to look at news sources and whether or not they agree with them they’re able to recognize how to verify the source,” Van Tuyl said.”These kinds of things are important for them to learn as they go forward because in a couple of years they’ll be able to vote.”According to a Nieman Reports article from Spring 2017 entitled “Can News Literacy Be Taught?”, another group in Bethesda, Maryland called the News Literacy Project is working to improve media literacy. The group, led by former Los Angeles Times reporter Alan Miller, also creates tools for educators to teach media literacy to students. Additionally, they are working on producing public service announcements on fake news and news literacy.Kris Boyle, assistant professor of news media at BYU, thinks there have been good and bad impacts of social media on accessing and evaluating news. On one hand, social media has made news more accessible to people, but on the other hand, the increased volume of news in social media has made it a little more difficult to evaluate.“There are individuals who take at face value what they see in social media as real news,” Boyle said.As a college professor, Boyle feels it’s his role to educate his students on how to be good journalists who use reliable sources in their stories. By doing this, they can help other Americans become more media literate and gain their trust.“That’s kind of why I really immerse myself in what I do at BYU,” Boyle said. “Because the students here at BYU get the type of training that makes them good, solid journalists and truth-seekers and disseminators that can provide the truth and accuracy in terms of what they share.”Tips for being more literate. (Laura Spilsbury)

Propaganda campaigns may be instituted either by the government or by one or more of the top media firms. The campaigns to discredit the government of Nicaragua, to support the Salvadoran elections as an exercise in legitimizing democracy, and to use the Soviet shooting down of the Korean airliner KAL 007 as a means of mobilizing public support for the arms buildup, were instituted and propelled by the government.

Marshall McLuhan was concerned with the observation that we tend to focus on the obvious. In doing so, we largely miss the structural changes in our affairs that are introduced subtly, or over long periods of time.

I) the size, concentrated ownership, owner wealth, and profit orientation of the dominant mass-media firms; (~) advertising as the primary income source of the mass media; (3) the reliance of the media on information provided by government, business, and "experts" funded and approved by these primary sources and agents of power; (4) "flak" as a means of disciplining the media; and (5) "anticommunism" as a national religion and control mechanism. These elements interact with and reinforce one another

The medium is the message" tells us that noticing change in our societal or cultural ground conditions indicates the presence of a new message, that is, the effects of a new medium. With this early warning, we can set out to characterize and identify the new medium before it becomes obvious to everyone - a process that often takes years or even decades

The large media companies have also diversified beyond the media field, and non-media companies have established a strong presence in the mass media.

Van Tuyl hopes she can help the students learn how to make informed decisions

More than 7,800 students in all the academic levels tested were presented with information in social media, news articles, and comments.

Before advertising became prominent, the price of a newspaper had to cover the costs of doing business. With the growth of advertising, papers that attracted ads could afford a copy price well below production costs.

SIZE, OWNERSHIP, AND PROFIT ORIENTATION OF THE MASS MEDIA

following headings

Putting the two together allows people to jump to the mistaken conclusion that, somehow, the channel supersedes the content in importance, or that McLuhan was saying that the information content should be ignored as inconsequential.

McLuhan warns us that we are often distracted by the content of a medium (which, in almost all cases, is another distinct medium in itself.) He writes, "it is only too typical that the "content" of any medium blinds us to the character of the medium."